202 THE HUNTING GKOUNDS 



our path. With some the golden age appears to 

 have been passed at school — with others, later in 

 life. Here a stately old general tells of the glorious 

 time he passed as a jolly sub in the days of powder 

 and pigtails ; and there a sturdy old squire of the 

 last generation recounts with glee the doings of his 

 time, " when hounds could run and huntsmen went 

 the pace ; " yon phlegmatic-looking old divine, with 

 blanched locks and rubicund nose, which bespeaks 

 his love of the pleasures of the table, relates, with 

 intense satisfaction, the roistering days he spent as 

 a young man in a fast regiment of Light Dragoons, 

 when it was considered a " crying sin " for any one 

 to quit the social board until he had disposed of a 

 couple of magnums under his belt ; and that 

 shrivelled-up old relic of mortality, who seems to 

 stand before us as a specimen of what the hand of 

 time can effect on our mortal frame, will prate by 

 the hour of the jolly dogs of his day, and the 

 fascinations of town when he was a gay Lothario. 

 Each and every one has some period of his life on 

 which he loves to look back and think upon, 

 although, perhaps, he may talk much more about 

 the future. The soldier loves to recall to mind the 

 scenes of many a hard-fought day ; the sailor, his 

 adventures on tlie heaving main ; the wanderer 

 delights in the reminiscences of travel in many 

 lands ; and the fox-hunter in the stiff bursts and 

 glorious runs of bygone times ; but the sportsman 

 who has visited the Neilgherri mountains and 



